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Mini-ITX AmigaONE Board
bhtooefr writes "When I was checking Mini-ITX.com, I found this little gem, info on the AmigaONE Lite board that will be coming out. It's a Mini-ITX compliant motherboard, so you'll be able to throw an Amiga in a Cubid case. Pictures are here (first two - first is without CPU, second is with)."
Who actually still uses Amigas? Where are they popular?
AmigaOne News:Alan Redhouse Comments on AmigaWorld about the A1-SE Lite
:
Posted by Mikey_C on 20-Sep-2003 18:14:27 (2452 reads)
Read Alan's full post
TA magazine issue 15. To quote myself (because its easier than typing)
Quote:
AmigaOne Lite - some more details.
In the last edition of Total Amiga I gave a brief overview of the AmigaOne Lite - an entry level AmigaOne designed to both as a CD32/A1200 successor and for use in embedded systems such as kiosks, STB's etc. However the more observant of you will have realised that in the last issue I actually described the AmigaOne-SE Lite - so why the change of name?
In the interim period we have re-examined the costs and decided that it is economically feasible to significantly increase the A1-Lite's specification and flexibility within the same overall target pricing. As one of these changes is to use the standard A1XE CPU modules (plus a new entry-level 750CXe module) we dropped the 'SE' from its name.
The full specifications for the AmigaOne Lite are as follows:
Micro ITX form factor (170mmx170mm)
Gigabit and 10/100 ethernet on board
133MHz UDMA RAID IDE controller
USB 2.0 on board
IEEE 1394 ('FireWire') on board
2x AGP graphics on board with PAL/NTSC TV out
AC97 sound on board
1 x PCI33MHz slot (horizontal, via supplied riser card)
Cardbus slot for flash card support (diskless booting, applications, games slot etc)
Usual legacy PS/2, serial, parallel ports
Being a standard form factor it will fit in a standard micro ITX case, such as the one shown in the enclosed photograph. Please visit the web link at http://www.morex.com.tw/minicase.htm and www.mini-itx.com to see other suitable case designs.
We are aiming to bring the AmigaOne Lite to market early next year.
Not mentioned in the above spec is that the board is now designed to take the standard A1XE megarray cpu module so that it can be supplied with/upgraded to anything from an entry level (=cheap) 750CXe@433 to (possibly) a 1.3GHz G4.
The pictures published on the Soft3 website are of the first pre-prototype version - there will be 2 or 3 revisions before the actual production version is ready. The first step - this board - is basically to shrink the A1XE board to a mini-ITX formfactor and make sure it works properly. Then the other chipsets and connectors will be added and that series of boards use for developers to port OS & applications. It will also be used to demonstrate capability - and hopefully gain some significant orders - in the industrial markets that we and other dealers are targetting (display controllers, kiosks, etc).
Finally we hope the final version (which will be as near as possible to the above spec) will be available for sale in the specialist shops (and ultimately in the high street electronic entertainment chains) - with OS4 and some Amiga applications - in 1Q04.
The pre-production pictures were intended to be shown - at this stage - only to the A1 developers and to the A1-users list on AmigaWorld to try to get some useful feedback. Thats why there was really no explanation available to the world at largel when Soft3 (due to a misunderstanding) put them up on their own website.
However, from what I can see the, open publication of these pictures, together with the screen shots of a beta of OS4 running on the A1 - has had a very positive reception. But, please, no private emails for more details on availability dates and prices - we're swamped with emails as it is. This stuff will be posted 'when its ready' (c).
Hope this helps
Alan
17cm by 17cm
The board is a beta design, not the final one. It'll be a few more months yet as they get all the functionality they want onto the board sensibly.
AmigaOS4 is now booting on native PPC platforms now (well, the AmigaOne).
Lemmings, the way it was meant to be played!
I think the next time someone links a pictures page, a paypal donate link should go right beside it, in order to pay for their melted server.
:)
Those poor hardware sites just get pounded
First I'm told my C64 can be be modded for broadband.
/me dusts off his Apple ][
Then an Amiga runs at 900Mhz.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Denise and Agnus are spinning in their silicon landfills.
No, GEM was on the Atari ST ;-)
-psy
Well I don't have any pictures of this particular board for comparison... but all Mini-ITX boards are the exact same size (170mmx170mm) so here are some pics I found real quick of other Mini-ITX boards:
8 60T0001 .jpg
o ry0026.jpg
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o ject0020c.j pg
/ images /ps2pc0000.jpg
Here's one with a CD next to it...
http://mini-itx.com/reviews/b860t/images/B
Here's one with a coke can next to it (REALLY puts it into perspective):
http://mini-itx.com/news/images/st
Here's one inside a humidor:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/humidor64/
And inside an NES:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/nespc/images/n
And inside a breadbox:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/images/pr
And inside a PS2:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/playstation2pc
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
In addition, during this file transfer, AMosaic will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Cygnus Edit is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Amigas, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an Amiga that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Amiga's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 7.1 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Amiga is a superior machine.
Amiga addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an Amiga over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
[I've been waiting to post this for ages. Just kidding btw, I really, really, miss my A500+, with 6Mb of RAM and a 45Mb SCSI HD. :-(]
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There is; it runs MacOS 9/X without the need for an actual Mac ROM. The site can be found here.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Cable companies were still using them a couple of years ago, don't know if they still are. Amiga OS 4 is being developed, There is suppose to be a new amiga coming out someday.
Yes, I noticed while under AT&T cable I did see a "Guru Meditation error", so I can verify one was in use roughly 3 years ago in washington. I think Perhaps it was an amiga 2000. Though the layout of that particular information station did change shortly afterwards, I would "guess" they may have switched platforms. Dispite the fact that I have a softspot for the Amiga I can see that it would be a pain in the tookus to support in the 21st century, esp a one with zorro based slots.
The reason I abonded my amiga was just a simple matter of moolah. To do web even in 8bit color I needed new roms, either 3.x roms or 1.x roms where I could softload the 3.x roms. The 68030 was somewhat adquate, I would have prefered a 68040 or better, and upgrading the 2000 was just too much money for the speed increase. Further that whole zorro II vs zorro III thing, the fact that my selection of graphics boards were pretty limited in the zorro II department, and there was a super major slowdown with AGA emulation. Basicly the upgrades I wanted to peform would set me back a close to a grand, and franky I could get a PC or a Mac for that.
On the cool beans level, the scsi support was superb. I could copy CDs to the hard disk with ease due to the fact that I had a nice toshiba without digital copybit proection with a simple copy command.
Is this still a viable platform? To be honest, I've not seen their lastest OS [3.9 I think was their most recent]. I must admit I was curious, but I could never find a copy online and I wasn't about to shell out cash just to look at it. Still if there is decent linux support I imagine this could be a viable alternative to the intel based machines, though a touch spendy IMHO.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Seemed a bit like overkill for playing Frogger, though I suppose if you want a networked MMORPG version of it where you're trying to frag everybody else's frogs before they cross the road, I guess it'll help...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It isn't dead until it runs BSD.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
I really don't understand why these amiga stories keep coming up from time to time. No matter how good the original was the platform is hopelessly antiquated, and any new product will surely be a nearly complete redesign. It makes no sense to attach all that work to a quaint rebrand.
I was thinking roughly the same thing, but then I thought of a few positive points:
1) The PowerPC has a much cleaner architecture than any of the Intel Pentium chips and AltiVec blows the doors off MMX (in hindsight, IBM should have gone with the Motorola 68000 instead of the Intel 8086 for the original IBM PC).
2) According to the article, the first production run will run PowerPC 750CXe and maybe the G4, but think about it. If they're successful, there's no reason they shouldn't come out with a G5 version in a year or two, perhaps even a dual-G5 version (mmm, yummy).
3) For you Linux fanatics, here's a platform without an entrenched operating system to go with it. Guess what most people will chose to run on it.
All in all, I think these are all good reasons for all you good little geeks and nerds to buy one of these boards, slap it into a cheap case and help port your favorite apps to it.
Honestly, I think it's because the manufacturers realize there's a lot of profit to be milked from thin client sales. They're not really interested in getting in big price wars with them - because despite the advertising talk about how inexpensive they're supposed to be, they know they've got a niche market that will keep paying the higher prices. Discounting the thin clients isn't likely to increase that market very much.
I worked with the Netier thin clients for a while (now bought out by Wyse Corp.), and they provide centralized management software for them that helps get users "locked in" to buying more and more of their thin clients. Why? Well, you have to go to considerable effort to build update packages that their software can push out to the clients, so software in their flash memory can be modified. If you spent a whole day building a package to, say, update the Citrix ICA client on your thin clients, you're not going to be too happy if it only gets used to update 15 or 20 systems. You'd rather have it do all 200, 300, or even 1000 systems in your company, right? So right there, Wyse knows you'll be back for more thin clients - whether they cost $600 each, or $150 each.
The majority of people I've seen using a freeware solution like LTSP are on tight budgets to begin with, so they're generally using it as a way to recycle old, existing computers - as opposed to shopping for bargains on new thin clients.
They still are, most notably to run the "community bulletein board" software on the public access channels in between highschool football games and Trekkies griping about the state of the Sci-Fi channel in someone's basement. Every now and again, the hard drive will crash, and the Amiga screen will pop up on the TV and demand that you mount a volume or stick a floppy into Drive A. I think the "previews" channel runs the same program, as I've seen the ugly-as-sin Amiga UI whining that it needs a drive on those channels, too.
They knew how to make computers that last in the '80s...
SoupIsGood Food
when DRM crap gets implemented at the hardware level on intel/AMD boards. Frankly I'm glad to have alternatives.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just like you can sell a G5 based machine running OSX and call it a Mac, or a Pentium 4 / AMD XP based system running Windows XP and call it a PC.
The Amiga just skipped the inbetween stages.
Sure it doesn't have chips named Agnus, Paula and Denise and it doesn't come with a Zorro slot. But then again, how many Mac's come with a Nubus slot and are powered by a 68000? and how many PC's still have ISA and a socket for a 8087?
Who's to say that if the Amiga's development hadn't followed a more 'normal' path, that what we would have seen today with is anything different from the Amiga One?
The NEW "Amiga" is an interesting beast, and shares little (save running old apps via UAE proably) with the old but the name.
And that will be mostly true untill AmigaOS 4.0 comes out. The new kernel, ExecSG, is not based on *nix/BSD. It is a re-implementation of Exec on the new PPC architecture.
Disclaimer: This is posted with my AmigaONE board, running KDE on Debian.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I do! I can have this A2000/060 crash, and retain my dialup-ISP connection. MS Worms pain my ISP but not me directly.
Big business customers in Queensland include Queensland Rail (Visual Arrivals Info at inner-city Brisbane stations) and Queensland Transport (Visual Information).
Second-hand (10 year old) Amigas are MORE valuable than 10 year old x86 systems.
The AmigaOne Lite is certain to be popular in imbedded and kiosk applications.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"